Category: RKBA

Teaching us to Hate Guns and Despise Gun Owners

We all know how to sell something. We also know how to discredit an idea or action. All we have to do is ignore its benefits and inflate its costs. Are those lies exactly? A comedian can lie to us, but we don’t go to a comedy club to hear the truth. Here is how the mainstream media and anti-rights politicians teach us to hate guns and to despise gun owners.. and yes, they lie about it.

Tell half the truth about armed defense. The easiest way for the media and gun-prohibition-politicians to blame gun owners is to show us the harm that criminals do with guns and to ignore the lives saved when honest citizens use their firearms. The mainstream media tells us about the horrific murderer who used a gun. The news ignores the common events of armed defense that happen every day. It is hard to overstate this since the media bias isn’t a few percent, but over a thousand-fold. That level of distortion is commonly called a lie.

We can test that right now. See if you can remember a time when the news told you about a murderer who used a gun. Of course you can, but do you remember when the news media showed you an example of armed defense where the good guys and good gals stopped the attacker and saved lives? That happens more than 4,600 times a day and yet you can’t remember seeing more than one or two news stories about it. It is easy to blame guns and gun owners for murder and robbery when the mainstream news media hides half the story.

Misrepresent gang activity as firearms accidents. If you look, you will find more and more stories of young men engaging in violent crime. We now see 12-year-olds as part of armed carjacking gangs. It is easy to assume that when a 11, 12, or a 13 year old gets shot that it was a firearms accident. That might be true in a small rural town but 12 year olds are part of violent gangs in our failed cities.

It is certainly true that many youngsters are shot as innocent bystanders but that isn’t a “firearms accident” at all. We have to make the clear distinction between a firearm accident and involuntary manslaughter. The great news is that both the number and the rate of real firearms accidents have been falling for years. Firearms education prevented accidents.

Mix suicides in with homicides. The largest fraction of gun-related deaths are from suicide. Long ago we passed laws that made suicide illegal. Notice that someone who is willing to take their own life is not concerned with breaking the law. We passed “red flag” laws that take firearms from gun owners. We took their guns but we didn’t offer them mental health counseling. We’ve also seen some states impose mandatory waiting periods of 3 to 14 days before you can pick up the gun you bought.

The claim is that mandatory waiting periods will reduce the rate of suicide. We are told that we might impulsively use the next gun we buy to commit suicide, but you would not use the firearms you already have in your home. You read that correctly and waiting periods for existing gun owners don’t make sense.

Suicide is a real problem that deserves more than an imaginary answer. The number of suicides rises and falls each year, but we have not found clear evidence that gun-control laws reduced the rate of suicide. I have seen the large and sustained effort that firearms manufacturers, ammunition manufacturers, gun shops, and individual gun owners have put into mental health counseling for gun-owners in crises. They helped establish and fund programs like Walk-the-talk America and Hold My Guns.

Confuse gun owners with criminals. We don’t see the rate of crime drop after states impose gun-control laws. The reason is obvious since honest people obey gun laws but criminals are the ones who commit crimes. Unlike us, criminals don’t use gun shops to get their guns. Criminals get their guns the same place they get their drugs. They buy them on the street from other criminals.

The news media tells us that making it harder for honest citizens to get guns will somehow change the way criminals behave. That is magic rather than reason, but the media tells us that honest gun owners are to blame for what criminals do with guns.

Blame gun owners for mass-murderers. Honest gun owners are blamed each time a mad-man commits murder in a “gun-free zone” where the victims are disarmed by law. We were told that we need to have mandatory background checks to stop mass murderers. We were not supposed to look at that statement too closely since mass-murder is pretty much a one-and-done career. When we looked, we found that some mass murderers did have a criminal record that should have disqualified them from having a gun. That prohibition scheme doesn’t work when prosecutors don’t prosecute criminals.

What surprised us is that the crazy mass-murderers actually told us why they wanted to kill. We’ve read their journals and their manifestos. They want to be famous and will kill to get what they want. The news media is all too eager.

We were not told that 49-out-of-50 mass murders occur in gun free zones. We’re not shown that honest gun owners stopped 104 attempted mass-murders in the last seven years. Where we were allowed to go armed, we stopped more than half of the attempted mass-murders in the last few years. If that comes as a surprise to you then you know that the mainstream media has been lying to you. Armed citizens are the cure rather than the disease that caused public-violence and celebrity-murders.

Call out gun owners as an emotional threat. We’ve seen politicians question our right to defend ourselves. The news media and anti-rights activists demean not only guns and gun owners but the people who tolerate them.

We’ve talked about facts, but we haven’t talked about feelings very much. There is a reason for all this animosity directed at gun owners.

Gun owners are guilty of wrongthink. Questioning the effectiveness of gun-control laws undercuts the utopian fantasy of gun-control. We think we are discussing facts but we are actually shattering their dreams. We are considered a threat since we ask ordinary people to question the utopian vision of gun-control.

It is comforting to think that getting rid of guns would get rid of violence. Some politicians and activists are strongly attached to that fairy tale. Unless we shout our support for gun-control, we are considered a threat since we make the utopians feel insecure.

How dare you put your safety and the safety of your family ahead of my comforting fantasy! 

We talked about facts, but if you want to make someone uncomfortable then question their dreams. That explains the vitriol thrown at ordinary citizens who want to protect themselves.

Facts matter to those who are influenced by facts. Dreams matter to those who live in dreams. I will not call my virtue a vice simply to make other people comfortable. Life is too precious for that. I have dreams of the future too, and so do you.

Retconning Heller: Five Takes on New York Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen

New York Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen was the first significant Second Amendment case that the Supreme Court had heard in over a decade since its decision in District Columbia v. Heller. It was one of the most highly anticipated case of the 2021-22 Term and serves as the first indication of how the addition of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett might alter the trajectory of the Court’s Second Amendment case law.

If Heller could have been characterized as a “minimalist” opinion at the time of its decision and McDonald v. Chicago as an almost overdetermined extension of Heller by its application to the states through incorporation, Bruen tends towards maximalism, dramatically expanding the scope of the Second Amendment and threatening a variety of gun control laws that lower courts had upheld while the Court stayed its hand. Given that there is now a solid majority (if not a super-majority) willing to support a robust Second Amendment, whatever Bruen’s ultimate scope, it is unlikely that the Court will be as quiescent as it was in the decade following Heller.

This essay offers some preliminary observations about both the opinion itself, as well as its likely effects, some of which are starting to manifest. Our first take concerns the question of opinion assignment. Why did Chief Justice Roberts—whose support for the Second Amendment had been suspect—assign the opinion to Justice Thomas?

Takes two and three concern Justice Thomas’s substitution of text, history, and tradition for tiered-scrutiny; and his call for courts to adopt analogical reasoning should the former fail to provide answers to resolve particular cases. In rejecting tiered-scrutiny, Thomas argued that the lower courts had misread the Heller decision itself; that Heller rejected tiered-scrutiny in favor of a textual, historical, and traditional inquiry. In order to make Bruen seem less like an abrupt departure, we argue, Justice Thomas had to “retcon” Heller—reading back into the latter decision the analytical framework adopted in Bruen. We also question how helpful his explanation of the method for analogizing to other extant gun regulations when history and tradition have run out is likely to be to lower courts who have to rehear cases involving dozens of issues delineating the scope of the Second Amendment settled over the last fifteen years since Heller.

Take Four wonders about the status of what we earlier termed “the Heller safe harbor”—the list of “presumptively lawful” regulations that the Court said were not called into question by the decision. Critics at the time questioned whether these could be squared with the self-conscious originalism of the rest of the opinion. This tension is only heighted by Bruen’s text-history-tradition only approach.

Finally, in keep with our longstanding interest in lower court reception of destabilizing, possibly transformative Supreme Court opinions, we look at the reaction of the lower courts, post-Bruen. While approaches differ, a surprising number of these opinions seem to recognize Bruen for the sea-change it portends and are attempting to implement it in good faith. Although as was true with cases like United States v. Lopez and Heller itself, some courts are also trying to avoid the wider implications of Bruen using any available argument, however specious; and we detect in some an “uncivil obedience” intended to raise the Supreme Court’s costs of holding the line laid down in Bruen. A brief conclusion follows.

SSRN-id4372216 retcon heller

Proposed Tennessee bill would expand concealed carry law to include all firearms

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WTVC) — A new bill in the Tennessee legislature wants to change concealed carry laws throughout the state to include all firearms.

But opponents, including the Tennessee Highway Patrol, are saying the expansion is concerning for law enforcement.

House Bill 1005 seeks to change the reference from “handgun” to simply “firearm,” allowing citizens to publicly carry semi-automatic weapons.

The proposed change raise questions about criminality versus civil liberties.

Currently it is legal to carry a handgun through the streets in Tennessee.

However, this bill could change that, making it legal to carry any firearm with a permit.

“I don’t want him (motions to child) having to, you know, walk around see who’s carrying guns all over the place,” said Patrick Blackwell.

Blackwell says he worries about the example this bill could set for his child if it becomes law.

During the subcommittee meeting lawmakers say it would also include AK 47s.

“I’m reading this bill, and this would allow any individual to carry an AK 47 out front of a building and up and down Broadway. Am reading that correctly?” asked Rep. Bill Beck.

“Yes sir.”

The bills sponsor, state Rep. Rusty Grills says this would provide Tennesseans with their right to bear arms and defend themselves.

“It’s our job as legislators, in my opinion, to make sure that every Tennessean’s constitutional rights are protected,” says Grills.

But some members of law enforcement, aren’t a fan of the bill.

“The idea of someone being able to carry any kind of rifle or high capacity is a concern for law enforcement. How do we address them? They walk in this building, we’re charged with protecting it,” said Colonel Matt Perry.

Supporters of the change say the guns would still need to be purchased legally.

But that’s the problem, according to some lawmakers.

“I think that’s part of the challenge in this bill is that law enforcement will not know who has legally purchased a weapon, who has illegally purchased a weapon, if it’s an automatic or if it’s semiautomatic, if it has been modified, if it has not been modified,” says Rep. Antonio Parkinson.

WTVC asked Tennessee residents their opinion.

“I think it creates more fear and incites more fear than it offers protection,” says Kat Wright.

But David Ramsey has a different outlook on the bill.

“When you are in a place where they’re more gun friendly, you’re going to think twice before you commit a crime if you know, half the people there could be carrying a gun,” says Ramsey.

The bill recently passed through the civil justice subcommittee and is scheduled for discussion in the full committee on March first. The Senate bill hasn’t made any progress yet.

Iowa, Ohio, Weigh In-State Ban on Federal Gun Control Enforcement

Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and other red states are weighing in-state bans on the enforcement of federal gun controls deemed infringements on gun rights.

Montana has such a ban and on February 10, Breitbart News reported that Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) told the ATF their AR pistol stabilizer brace rule cannot be enforced in Montana.

Missouri also has such a ban, as does Nebraska and Arizona.

The Wall Street Journal noted that Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and other red states are now weighing bans on federal gun control enforcement.

Iowa state Rep. Jeff Shipley (R) is pushing the ban in his state and the push is supported by Carroll County Attorney John Werden.

Werden said, “I don’t see this as a liberal or conservative issue. I see it as a states’ rights issue.”

The Des Moines Register observed that Iowans voted to adopt a constitutional amendment on November 8, 2022, and the amendment exceeds the gun rights’ protections contained in the Second Amendment.

The amendment says, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

Arizona Wants to Use Public Schools to Demystify and Destigmatize Guns

The Arizona House of Representatives is working hard to secure gun rights for the citizens of the Grand Canyon State. It has so far passed a slew of bills that include legalizing gun silencers and allowing parents to carry firearms on school campuses. Another bill that is raising eyebrows is HB 2332, which will require middle and high schools to offer training on how to properly handle a firearm. According to Arizona’s local NPR, parents would still be able to opt out. But even with this provision, groups like Moms Demand Action and Civic Engagement Beyond Voting are speaking out against the measure.

PHOENIX – Arizona’s House of Representatives is continuing to advance a bill requiring public middle and high schools in Arizona to offer training on the proper handling of firearms.

Rep. Selina Bliss, R-Prescott, who sponsored HB 2332, said she wants children to learn proper firearms handling from experts to stop accidental deaths, and denied that the bill was about training children to use firearms.

Continue reading “”

Of continuing interest to Shootists

New Mexico: Significant Action Expected on Gun Control Bills in Santa Fe on Monday!

The New Mexico House of Representatives could vote as early as Monday on HB 100 by Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), legislation imposing a mandatory 14-day waiting period on all firearm purchases. Contrary to the author’s claims, this legislation will not “enhance” the existing FBI background check process in any way; it will only delay your ability to exercise your Second Amendment right to defend yourself, your family and your property. Criminals do not adhere to a “cooling off” period. Please contact your State Representative and urge him or her to OPPOSE HB 100.

On Monday, February 27, the Senate Judiciary Committee will meet at 1:30pm (or after the Senate floor ends), in Room 321 of the Roundhouse to consider two anti-gun bills: SB 171 by Sen. Bill Soules (D-Las Cruces), legislation that attempts to supersede federal law and make it a FELONY to manufacture, sell, transfer, or acquire a firearm sound suppressor and other National Firearms Act items, as well as certain semi-automatic pistols, and House Bill 9 by Rep. Pamela Herndon (D-ABQ), a bill that creates back-door storage requirements by imposing criminal penalties on gun owners if a third-party minor accesses and displays, brandishes or injures someone with their firearm. Please make plans to attend the committee hearing in-person or via zoom to show your opposition to Senate Bill 171 and House Bill 9.

For public participation and to register for Zoom, send email to SJC.Zoom@nmlegis.gov. Include bill number, proponent or opponent, and if you will be attending in person or via zoom.

To attend meeting via Zoom click the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81502543362.
Meeting ID: 815 0254 3362
Zoom Call: 1-253-205-0468

Refer to www.nmlegis.gov “What’s Happening” for the Senate Judiciary Committee Procedures. 

Contact members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and urge them to OPPOSE SB 171 and HB 9. 

Also on Monday, February 27, the House Government, Elections & Indian Affairs Committee will meet at 8:30am, in Room 305, to consider SB 44 by Sen. Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe), a measure banning the carrying of firearms within 100ft of any polling locations on Election Day or during early voting, even by concealed handgun licensees. These new “gun-free” zones apply not only to voters, but also to customers or patrons of shopping centers and stores that serve as polling locations. Please make plans to attend the committee hearing in-person or via zoom to show your opposition to Senate Bill 44.

You are invited to a Zoom webinar.

When: Feb 27, 2023 08:30 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Topic: House Government, Elections, & Indian Affairs
Please click the link below to join the webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81850374006
One tap mobile : US: +12532050468,,81850374006# or +12532158782,,81850374006# Webinar ID: 818 5037 4006

Contact members of the House Government, Election & Indian Affairs Committee.

Debunking the gun-banners’ false constitutional-carry claims
Gov. DeSantis will likely sign the bill long before its July 1 effective date.

Nearly every anti-gun group in the country has descended upon Tallahassee to try to stop Florida from becoming the 26th state to allow residents and visitors to carry concealed firearms without a permission slip from the government.

It’s an important mission for the gun-ban industry, because once Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the bill — and he will — a majority of states will allow unlicensed or permitless carry. For pro-gun advocates, this would be a significant victory in the war to restore our Second Amendment rights, and the other team will do anything they can to prevent that from happening.

It’s important to point out that neither Florida’s HB 543 nor its companion bill, SB 150, are traditional constitutional-carry bills, since neither bill legalizes the open carry of arms. True constitutional carry allows gun owners to decide for themselves whether to carry arms openly or concealed. Despite Republican super-majorities in both the House and the Senate, and a governor who’s promised to sign “constitutional carry” legislation, open carry was not included in either bill. We still have not been told why, at least not officially.

In what has been called “smart bundling,” SB 150 also includes numerous school-safety provisions, such as expanding Florida’s School Guardian program, adding funds for hardening schools, providing additional money for gun-sniffing dogs, clarifying zero-tolerance policies and ensuring every law enforcement agency has an active-shooter policy. So, a vote against the bill can be seen as a vote against school safety.

Regardless of what the bill is called or its other offerings, the very thought of restoring more gun rights — especially in Florida — has brought the gun-banners out in droves. We’ve seen members of Everytown, Demanding Moms, Demanding Students, Giffords, Brady and Florida’s extremely anti-gun League of Women Voters all shuffle to the mic. Their testimony before House and Senate committees has been interesting, desperate and at times, comical. If the gun banners sent their A-team to Tallahassee and this is the best they can do, freedom will most certainly prevail.

It’s clear the gun-banners’ moves are well organized and orchestrated. Too many of their objections seemingly come from the same playbook. Keep in mind anti-gunners have phones, Skype and Zoom, too. They’re sharing information and ideas. Florida has become their latest battle template. They are throwing a lot of crap against the wall. That which sticks likely will be used in the next state they attempt to victimize.

Here are some of the lowlights of their testimony.

Continue reading “”

How red states are set to permanently undermine gun control

When Missouri passed it’s sanctuary law, the measure basically said that federal gun control laws were invalid. They just didn’t exist within the state’s borders.

Other states started trying to follow suit.

I got a fair bit of heat because I actually said I thought that was probably a bad idea. It wasn’t that I dislike Missouri’s law, only that I didn’t think it would stand up to legal challenge from the federal government. I wanted to see what the courts said so other laws could be better crafted.

In Ohio, though, it seems they are taking an approach that I personally feel is far wiser. And they’re not the only ones treading that same path.

The bill mirrors a law passed in Missouri in 2021 that restricts the enforcement of federal laws which violate the state’s view of the Second Amendment, according to the Dispatch. The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Missouri after the law was passed, saying the state could not “simply declare federal laws invalid,” according to a DOJ press release.

Loychik believes that HB 51 is even stronger than Missouri’s law, according to the Dispatch. “There have been changes that have been made. This bill is a lot stronger,” he said, noting that the bill will not violate the Supremacy Clause.

“House Bill 51 does not challenge that,” Loychik said. “It simply states that the state of Ohio will not help the federal government agencies enforce their gun-control agenda by commandeering our local enforcement.”

Earlier in February, Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying that Montana would not enforce the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) final rule for pistol braces.

The letter follows HB 258, passed by the Montana Legislature in 2021, a law that blocks peace officers, state employees or employees of a political subdivision “from enforcing, assisting in the enforce of, or otherwise cooperating in the enforcement of a federal ban on firearms, magazines, or ammunition,” according to the legislation.

See, I like the Missouri law. I want it to stand up in court. I just don’t believe it will.

However, agencies like the ATF depend on local law enforcement for assistance. Without them, they can’t really do all that much in our local communities.

By laying down the law and saying that local and state law enforcement will not help enforce unconstitutional gun control laws, they’re accomplishing the same thing as the Missouri law from a far more defensible legal position, in my layman’s opinion.

After all, the feds can’t just appropriate local law enforcement for their own purposes. They can’t swoop in and just demand the county sheriff dedicate X number of deputies toward their own investigations and arrests. They need those agencies to cooperate.

These efforts basically say that’s not going to happen.

In impact, there’s not a whole lot of difference between what they’re doing in Ohio and what Montana has already done. Yet the latter will likely survive legal challenges while the former isn’t as likely to.

I could be wrong, of course, and I’d love to be. I’d love it if Missouri’s sanctuary law was upheld by the Supreme Court and numerous other states decided to follow suit.

But I don’t think I am and I think most of you probably agree that I’m not, no matter how much we hope I am.

Ohio and Montana though? I think they’re on the right road.

 

New Hampshire: House Defeats Three Anti-Gun Bills

Earlier today, the New Hampshire House held the last of several floor votes on three anti-gun bills. Thanks to the strong support of NRA members and Second Amendment supporters, the bills were defeated and will not move forward this session.  NRA-ILA would like to thank all of those Representatives who defended the Second Amendment for law-abiding citizens in the Granite State.

House Resolution 8 urged Congress to pass an “assault weapons ban.” While no specifics were outlined in the resolution, gun grabbers continue to advocate for bans on standard equipment for commonly-owned firearms that many Americans and Granite Staters legally and effectively use for an entire range of legitimate purposes, such as self-defense or competition.

House Bill 158 banned “ammunition designed and intended to penetrate armor plating or ballistic vests.” This legislation is duplicative and unneeded. Federal law already prohibits the manufacture, importation, sale, or delivery of “armor-piercing” ammunition with very few exceptions.

House Bill 191 allowed state agencies to destroy voluntarily surrendered firearms, rather than requiring them to sell these firearms at public auction or to keep them for their own use.

Again, thank you to NRA Members and Second Amendment supporters who contacted their State Representatives in strong opposition to these anti-gun bills.

Proposed Kentucky version of SAPA

Bill would make Ky. a ‘Second Amendment sanctuary’

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ) — A bill that easily passed the Kentucky House Wednesday would make the state a “Second Amendment sanctuary.”

House Bill 153 would ensure Kentucky couldn’t use tax dollars or law enforcement to enforce a federal gun ban on ammunition, magazines, accessories or certain types of guns, according to sponsor Rep. Josh Bray (R-Mount Vernon).

“Kentuckians should decide firearm policy through their elected representatives, not through some bureaucrat in Washington D.C. who is changing the interpretation of an existing federal guideline,” Bray said.

Democrats, like Rep. Lisa Willner (D-Louisville), shared concerns with the bill.

“The people in District 35 worry every day about too little law enforcement of already existing laws,” she said. “This law that would increase access to guns would reduce enforcement. It moves us exactly in the wrong direction on both counts.”

The bill passed with a 78-19 vote. It now heads to the Senate.

To read the bill in its entirety, click here.

Who Are the Real Extremists?
America’s vast lawful gun culture is the norm today, as it has long been, not the infringement inherent in gun-control activists’ dystopian worldview.

In December of 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) confirmed that the state of Florida will soon improve the concealed-carry permitting system it has had in place since 1987 by adopting constitutional carry as well. In so doing, Florida would become the 26th state to get out of the way of the peoples’ right to “bear arms.” If this happens, in just a few decades, the United States will have gone from having one state with a permitless carry system in place (Vermont) to having a majority of states with permitless carry systems in place.

To those who follow this area of the law, the news that Florida is moving to add itself to the constitutional-carry list should be entirely unsurprising. Historically, Florida has often been a trailblazer in pursuit of the restoration of the Second Amendment, but, in this case, it has fallen behind the times. Indeed, to take a look at a map of constitutional-carry states is to notice that Florida is effectively surrounded. In the last few years, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia and have all made the switch, and they were preceded by so many other states that it is now possible to drive from Georgia to Arizona (via Montana) without ever leaving a state that hasn’t eliminated its permitting requirement.

But here’s a peculiar thing: If, for whatever reason, you were to have followed Florida’s wholly unexceptional plan solely via the mainstream press, you’d have a hard time learning any of this. Instead, you’d “know” all sorts of other things—things that, on closer inspection, turn out to be flatly false. Specifically, you’d end up thinking that Florida’s decision represented a dramatic departure from the norm. You’d end up thinking that Florida’s governor—and its legislature—were full of wild-eyed extremists. You’d end up thinking that states that abolish their permitting requirement become more dangerous as a result. Hell, if you availed yourself of the more-hysterical coverage, you might even end up worried that there were bound to be shootouts in the streets as a result of this change.

Don’t take my word for it; try it yourself. Pick up your phone, type the words “Florida constitutional carry” into Google and peruse the news articles that come up. Note the language that is used as a matter of routine: “extreme,” “dangerous,” “unsafe,” “radical.” Count the number of times that the uninformed opinion of the author is laundered through the phrase “experts say.” Observe the non-sequiturs and the lies; in particular, note the pretense that constitutional carry means that criminals are able to carry firearms with impunity, or that all regulations have been abolished. Consider how many times you are informed, as an aside, that the Second Amendment has been misinterpreted, or that it was never supposed to apply to individuals in the first instance. It’s remarkable.

It’s typical, too. Increasingly, stories about gun laws in America resemble dispatches from an alternate universe—one in which the Second Amendment does not mean what it says; in which the advent of “shall-issue” concealed carry never happened; in which permitless carry remains a fringe and untested idea; in which the massive increase in the number of concealed carriers coincided with an increase, rather than a precipitous drop, in crime; in which gun ownership remains the preserve of a handful of white men; and in which states such as Texas and Georgia, rather than states such as California and New York, are the outliers.

Contrast the manner in which the press habitually treats the gun laws of, say, Illinois or New Jersey, to how they treat the gun laws of, say, Arizona or Maine. If one were to take these various descriptions at face value, one would be forgiven for concluding that Illinois and New Jersey were “normal,” while Arizona and Maine represented outliers. But that is entirely false. Continue reading “”

West Virginia Governor Announces Support for Newly Passed Campus Carry Bill: ‘I’ll Sign It’

The Mountain State will soon be the latest to allow those with permits to carry concealed guns on college campuses.

On Tuesday, the West Virginia House of Delegates put the finishing touches on Senate Bill 10. By Wednesday, Governor Jim Justice (R.) announced his intention to sign it into law once it reaches his desk.

“I know it’s controversial, but from my standpoint, here’s where I stand: I stand rock solid with our Second Amendment,” Justice said during a press conference Wednesday. “When this bill comes to me, it won’t be with me but just a matter of seconds because I’ll sign it.”

Once signed, the bill will make West Virginia one of twelve states to allow gun carry in most areas of campus without an option for school officials to implement gun bans. It arrives at a time of heightened scrutiny over gun carry after the Supreme Court’s June decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen recognized a constitutional right to carry a gun in public for self-defense. Many blue states have rushed to pass laws cracking down on public gun carry in response to the ruling. Meanwhile, red states have continued to expand where civilians can carry in public and sought to eliminate permitting requirements.

Governor Justice cited frequent mass shootings across the country committed by “bad, bad, bad actors” that occur on “soft targets” as his reasoning for supporting the bill.

“God forbid, but it may very well be that we’ve got somebody on that campus that has a firearm and something bad starts to happen, and they save a bunch of lives,” he said.

Armed bystanders have intervened to stop or prevent mass shootings on numerous occasions throughout the country. Elisjsha Dicken returned fire against a shooter in July 2022 ending an attack on an Indiana mall food court. Similarly, a legally-armed bystander shot a gunman at an El Paso, Texas mall earlier this month.

He also pointed to long-standing campus carry laws in states like Texas that have been on the books “for years and years” to show that the policy can be implemented safely.

The bill would not prevent schools from instituting any and all restrictions on campus carry. But school officials would be limited to baring guns in buildings and other parts of campus with comprehensive security measures, such as metal detectors. Those provisions, however, were not enough to win over opponents of the bill. Some pointed to the recent mass shooting at Michigan State, where an adult not affiliated with the school shot and killed three students on campus, to argue against the bill.

Marshall University student E.T. Bowen said college students already feel “terrified on campus,” and adding more guns would exacerbate that.

“This bill is like throwing kerosene on the wildfire, and it is appalling that we even need to say that while there’s still blood on the ground at Michigan State,” Bowen said.

The bill’s supporters also pointed to prior mass shootings on college campuses. Delegate Mike Honaker (R.) was a state trooper who responded to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. He said the prospect of something like that happening again compelled him to give students a chance to defend themselves.

“Please hear me: Years ago, I sat on the foot of my bed with Windex and paper towels and I washed the blood of almost 30 kids off of my shoes because of an active shooter on a college campus,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “I fear that if I do not support this legislation, and it happens again, washing their blood off my shoes will not compare to trying to wash the blood off of my hands.”

The bill ultimately passed overwhelmingly on an 84-14 vote. Once signed, it will take effect on July 1, 2024.

West Virginia lawmakers overwhelmingly approve NRA-backed campus carry bill, send to governor for signing

West Virginia lawmakers passed an NRA-backed bill that will allow concealed carry permit holders to carry their firearms on the campuses of state colleges and universities.

“The National Rifle Association applauds the West Virginia Legislature’s passage of NRA-backed campus carry,” NRA West Virginia State Director Art Thomm told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

“There is no reason why any adult who is deemed mature enough to defend his or her country at war should not be entrusted to defend themselves and others on campus. And there is no reason an adult who is allowed to carry in other parts of the state can’t be trusted when on campus,” he added.

The bill passed in the West Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday 84-13.

If signed into law by Republican Gov. Jim Justice, West Virginia will become the 12th state in the U.S. with such legislation, alongside states like Arkansas, Georgia and Kansas. West Virginia is currently one of 20 other states that have no laws on the books preventing concealed carry holders from carrying on college campuses.

Supporters of the bill include Republican Delegate Mike Honaker, a former Virginia State Police officer who responded to the tragic Virginia Tech campus shooting in 2007 that left 32 people dead.

“I know we have to be careful about this issue,” he said. “But there’s no way that I, as someone who has lived through this and seen it with my own eyes, could forbid another free law-abiding American citizen from carrying a firearm and retaining the ability and the capacity to defend yourself or others, God forbid they ever be put in a position to do it,” he said last week as the bill advanced in state House.

Votes on the bill come just days after a shooting at Michigan State University on Feb. 13, when three students were killed and five others were injured. Critics of the bill cited the shooting in their argument against the legislation, with some college students in West Virginia attending a public hearing last week to voice their concerns.

Marshall University student E.T. Bowen said this month that some students are “terrified on campus as it is,” CBS News reported.

“We don’t need more guns to exacerbate that. This bill is like throwing kerosene on the wildfire, and it is appalling that we even need to say that while there’s still blood on the ground at Michigan State,” Bowen argued.

Thomm told Fox News Digital, however, that criminals break laws no matter if there is a gun-free zone or other rules prohibiting firearms.

“Criminals break laws regardless of boundaries or gun free zones. Law-abiding people don’t. NRA-backed campus carry has been passed in many states, and we look forward to Gov. Justice signing this life-saving legislation into law,” Thomm said.

RESPONSE BRIEF FILED IN MILLER v. BONTA CALIF. ‘ASSAULT WEAPON’ BAN CASE

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in the case of Miller v. Bonta, challenging California’s ban on so-called “assault weapons,” have filed a responding brief in the case, countering defense arguments and strategies already rejected by federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Our reply takes the state to task for going directly against the instructions of the federal court,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The state spent its entire 25-page brief trying to re-litigate the case, essentially arguing for ‘interest balancing’ by the court, which the Supreme Court nixed last year in its landmark Bruen ruling. The only logical conclusion is that the State of California is stalling, trying to delay the inevitable ruling that the ban on semiautomatic rifles is unconstitutional.”

SAF is joined by the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee, California Gun Rights Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition and four private citizens, including James Miller, for whom the case is named. They are represented by attorneys George M. Lee at Seiler Epstein, LLP and John W. Dillon at the Dillon Law Group, APC. The case is now before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

Plaintiffs note in their response brief, “The State’s attempt to ignore this Court’s instructions and introduce last-minute further “expert testimony” offered in other cases on the ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ question—which has already been settled by this Court—is also a naked appeal to interest balancing and is irrelevant to the question of historical analogues requested by this Court (and required under Bruen). At this point, Defendants are simply padding the record with old (and misplaced) arguments and extraneous declarations.”

“It seems clear to us the state is trying to revive arguments they cannot use because they have no historical evidence to support their gun ban,” Gottlieb observed. “The court shouldn’t tolerate such legal shenanigans, which ultimately attempt to reframe this case into a policy matter, which boils down to whether average citizens ‘need’ a semiautomatic firearm.

“The Supreme Court already settled this,” he continued. “It’s not up to the government to make that choice, it’s up to the American people, and their rights are not subject to public opinion polls or the whims of anti-gun politicians in Sacramento.”

Canada Illustrates The Reality Of The Gun-Control Agenda

Learning from one’s own misfortunes is smart, but it’s wiser to learn from—and avoid—the misfortunes of others. For American Second Amendment supporters, the Canadian experience provides a chilling and instructive lesson in what gun controllers really want: the end of civilian firearm ownership.

For many Americans, Canada is as familiar and relatable as neighboring states of the Union. Canada and the U.S. share a border, a common language, cultural touchstones and various commercial and sporting pursuits.

That last category includes a shared love of the outdoors, and especially of hunting and trapping. As with America, much of Canada’s expansive wilderness was settled by hardy hunters and trappers who braved the country’s wild frontiers in search of fortune and adventure. The gun is an inseparable part of both national stories.

But America and Canada also share a similar cultural divide when it comes to guns. Guns are a common and uncontroversial facet of life in both countries’ rural communities, where they are used not just to harvest wildlife but also to provide a safeguard against predators when police protection is scarce. The politics and culture of firearms in both countries’ cities are very different, however. Canadian and American urban elites—who get their meat from grocery stores and restaurants and who take routine police patrols for granted—consider firearms dangerous, unnecessary and counterproductive.

Nor are the elites on either side of the border willing to tolerate these differences. Rather, they blame firearms themselves, and not human agency or the social dynamics they themselves promote, for the criminal misuse of guns. They associate firearms with cultures they do not understand and—let’s be honest—consider to be inferior. Firearms are also linked in their minds with infamous crimes. And, having no other reference point for the gun’s place in society, they reflexively call for firearm bans in response to these events.

That’s the generous explanation. There are also politicians in both countries who use gun control as a tool to subjugate their political opponents, much as King George III did in the American colonies.

Despite the similarities, we can see very different outcomes in the two countries. Canadians have essentially lost the right of armed self-defense, and are frighteningly close to losing the freedom to possess firearms at all. America, meanwhile, has the highest per-capita gun-ownership rate in the world, with the right to keep and bear arms shielded—at least theoretically—from urban elites.

An article published last December in The Washington Post opined that Canada’s progressive Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a “gun-free Canada within his reach.” It noted how Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “was the first to begin the process of systematically banning entire categories of firearms,” with 1969 legislation that allowed the executive branch to declare certain firearms “prohibited.” A mass shooting in 1989 was then exploited to further clamp down on legal firearm ownership, prompting a needs-based licensing system that presumptively banned firearm acquisition for self-defense. Justin Trudeau capitalized on another mass killing in 2020 to accelerate the banning of “military-grade assault-style” long guns in Canada under existing law. He then promoted legislation in 2022 that would expand this bogus and misnamed category, coerce surrender of non-conforming guns and institute a “freeze” on handgun ownership. Trudeau later went even further, introducing amendments that would essentially grant the government control to ban what few hunting guns had remained legal.

Unlike Canada and the other commonwealth realms, however, the U.S. liberated itself from Britain’s monarchy in the Revolutionary War. This experience led the founding generation to enshrine the right to keep and bear arms in the nation’s organizing charter. Like Canada, the U.S. Congress passed major gun control in the 1960s. But this sparked renewed efforts by pro-gun Americans—led by the NRA—to promote responsible firearm ownership and to ensure the original understanding of the Second Amendment was expounded in scholarship and eventually preserved in judicial rulings.

Now, U.S. Supreme Court precedents protect the individual right to keep and bear firearms, in and outside of the home, for the core purpose of defense, and allow only such regulation as is consistent with the founding era’s legal history and traditions.

Yet, there are American politicians, like President Joe Biden himself, who see our neighbor to the North’s policies not as a warning, but as a roadmap. Only the dedicated and vigilant activism of informed gun owners, channeled through organizations like the NRA, stands in their way.

Private Gun Carriers’ Self-Defense Against Public Shooters
The El Paso incident from a few days ago, the FBI 2021 statistics, and more.

I had written about this in past years, but I thought I’d update it to reflect the El Paso incident from last week. According to the El Paso Police Department (see also CNN [Andy Rose]), a confrontation between two groups of teenagers at a mall “escalated into a physical fight” and then into a 16-year-old fatally shooting a member of the other group and seriously wounding another member, as well as injuring a member of his own group. Then,

As soon as the shooting ended, the 16-year-old suspect began to run and was pointing the gun towards the direction of bystanders, including 32-year-old Emanuel Duran, a Licensed to Carry Holder. As the suspect ran towards Duran and bystanders, Duran drew his handgun and shot the suspect.

At that time, one off-duty El Paso Police Officer arrived at the area of the shooting and together with Duran rendered aid to the 16-year old suspect and the others that were injured. Investigators found that there were at least two other legally armed citizens in the area of where the shooting took place, but were not involved.

Now in this case, the suspect didn’t seem to have planned a mass shooting; he seems to have had a beef with the other teenagers. On the other hand, he appears to have been pointing his gun towards the bystanders, so it’s hard to know what would have happened. And something similar could easily have happened with an intended mass shooting as well; for an incident like that from last year, see this WCHS-TV story:

Police said a woman who was lawfully carrying a pistol shot and killed a man who began shooting at a crowd of people Wednesday night in Charleston.

Dennis Butler was killed after allegedly shooting at dozens of people attending a graduation party Wednesday …. No injuries were reported from those at the party.

Investigators said Butler was warned about speeding in the area with children present before he left. He later returned with an AR-15-style firearm and began firing into the crowd before he was shot and killed.

“Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night,” Charleston Police Department Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett said.

According to WCHS-TV (Bob Aaron), Butler was a convicted felon, and was thus not legally allowed to own guns. In principle, perhaps he might still have been stopped by (say) a law requiring background checks, which would likely have stopped law-abiding sellers from selling him the gun; but it’s not clear whether someone with his criminal record would have much been stymied by that, as opposed to just buying a gun on the black market. Likewise, in El Paso, CNN reports that the gun used by the 16-year-old shooter was reported stolen.

I gathered some more examples from over the years here, and then followed up with data based on FBI reports of mass shootings in 2016 and 2017: legal civilian gun carriers tried to intervene in 6 out of 50 incidents, and apparently succeeded in 3 or 4 of them.

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